


A Fool From Any Direction

by syllic



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:06:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syllic/pseuds/syllic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fool From Any Direction

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: "Eames is a knight, and Arthur is a stable boy. Eames brings him little tokens from his quests and Arthur reverently removes his armor and lets Eames press him down sweetly into the hay" at [inception_kink](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink).
> 
> With thanks to H.

The new boy starts at the stables the day Eames' youngest cousin marries. The first time Eames sees him he pays little to no attention, too busy teasing his cousin, asking if there's a particular reason why Marguerite's dowry had to include young male stablehands.

The next time Eames sees him, he sees only his hands. His fingers are long and pale, and very deft as they unsaddle Eames' horse. He speaks gently, leading the horse away by the bridle. When Eames calls after him, he turns grudgingly, spinning slowly on one foot.

His mouth is set in a firm line and his eyebrows are drawn together, and he waits impatiently for Eames to address him, as if aggrieved to have to be of service.

"What's your name?" Eames asks, amused, and the boy's mouth turns down even more at the corners.

"Arthur," he says, twisting the bridle in his hands as if to focus his attention elsewhere.

"Arthur," Eames repeats. "I'm Eames."

 

The boy turns out not to be a boy at all. He's there to replace his brother in service under Eames' uncle, through an arrangement made with his family. The brother has recently been granted a plot of land, and Eames' uncle gave permission for him to be married, as long as he found someone to do his work under the master of horse.

"Congratulations on your brother's recent happiness," Eames says to Arthur, the next time he returns from a ride.

Arthur's face darkens.

"Thank you, sire," he says, so stiffly that Eames laughs loudly as he dismounts, handing Arthur the reins.

"Do I offend, Arthur?" he asks. "Perhaps you wish your brother were not happy?"

Arthur shakes his head.

"I am grateful for my brother's happiness, and for his lordship's kindness," he says formally.

"But?" prompts Eames, leaning one hip against the entrance to the stables.

"But last week I was apprenticed to the shire reeve's steward, and now I look after horses," Arthur snaps.

He freezes, and when he turns to look at Eames his face is pale. He is clearly mortified.

Eames raises an eyebrow at him, saying nothing.

"I apologise, sire," Arthur says quietly. It is there, in the grace of his apology and in the downward tilt of his head, that Eames sees his age. Arthur is slight, and his hands do not show signs of labour or battle, but he cannot be more than three or four years younger than Eames' 25.

"Apologise only if you mean it, Arthur," says Eames, quietly.

Arthur meets his gaze squarely, and does not say anything more.

Eames laughs, tipping his head in acknowledgment before he walks away.

 

He doesn't know what makes him do it. He and Benedict are in Peterborough, and Eames is waiting for his cousin to wrap up his business in the cathedral yard. He's wandering a back alleyway when he sees a man selling wax tablets, the sort that he once used for childhood lessons and which his uncle's steward still uses for accounts, and before he can think further on it, he's asking to see two.

The man takes one look at Eames' clothing and quotes a ridiculous price, and Eames is tempted to return and take the tablets without any payment at all, to teach the man a lesson. But in that moment Benedict appears at the end of the street, calling,

"Eames, for pity's sake," and Eames fumbles the necessary coins out of his purse, shoots the merchant a vicious look, and rips the tablets out of the man's hands.

He puts them in a saddlebag, and the edges rub against his calf the whole way home, like a pesky dog reminding its owner that it hasn't been fed. When they get back to the stables Benedict dismounts quickly, shooting Eames a wave as he heads to report to his father. Eames takes his time, patting his horse and undoing the saddlebags slowly enough that Arthur begins to shoot him impatient looks.

There's something wonderful about how quickly Arthur gets riled. His lips thin and his hands clench, and, if Arthur knew Eames any better, he'd know how tempted that makes Eames to find new ways to frustrate him every day.

"Here," he says, bringing the tablets out from the saddlebag and handing them to Arthur.

"Do you want these to be placed in your rooms, sire?" asks Arthur calmly.

His eyes are blazing, but the forced curve of his mouth is pleasant enough.

"No, Arthur," says Eames, amused. "I brought these for you."

"Is this a joke?" Arthur asks.

"No," says Eames. He does not elaborate.

"Would you like me to keep track of your expenses?"

Arthur says this with some disdain, but there is an eager gleam in his eyes.

"No," says Eames again, smiling.

Arthur's face closes down, and he says, acidly,

"Then, sire, if you could explain—"

"They're for you, Arthur. To do with as you will. Keep household accounts. Write your love notes in them before you transfer them to parchment. Draw inappropriate figures."

Arthur's eyes narrow, and Eames laughs.

"Or not. Like I said. They're for whatever you want."

Arthur gazes at him for a few long, heavy seconds. Finally, he says, so distrustfully that Eames has to laugh at him again,

"Then. I suppose. Thank you."

"No need to thank me," says Eames, meeting Arthur's discomfort with as heavy a dose of affable charm as he can.

He ducks out of the stables, turning to wave at Arthur from the door.

Arthur does not see him. He is running his finger over the edge of one of the closed tablets, and he does not look up.

 

Arthur spends the next few days watching Eames the way one might watch a sworn enemy who has recently been spotted lurking about one's house.

Eames takes every opportunity to smile widely and guilelessly at Arthur, who, Eames discovers during this time, has a spectacular ability to turn down the corners of his mouth.

On midsummer's day Eames rides with his younger cousins to the festivities in Peterborough, and the four of them return home only by virtue of their horses, which know the way.

They're singing loudly and still passing a wineskin between them when Arthur emerges from the stables, a lone, lithe figure against the pale blue of the sky. His arms are crossed and his posture radiates intense displeasure.

"You're drunk," he says, as Eames dismounts.

Eames is too busy attempting not to fall over, having not extricated his foot from the left stirrup in time, so he doesn't answer at first. He takes the stirrup by its strap and disentangles himself, then turns to look at Arthur seriously.

"Why Arthur," he says, leaning closer, until he can see nothing but the deep groove between Arthur's eyes, and the purse of his lips. "Yes," he continues, following the cut of Arthur's jaw with his eyes, turning his head to breathe gently against Arthur's neck. "Yes, yes I am. Tell me, do you have something against drunkenness?"

Arthur is still as a statue. The fine hair behind his ear flutters as Eames breathes against it.

"When one is away from home, surrounded by other drunkards, making a shameful target of oneself for bandits, yes. I have something against drunkenness."

He moves away abruptly, taking Algernon roughly by the reins and beginning to lead him away. Eames' cousins' stablehands have already done the same with his cousins' horses, and Eames can see William and Robert and Julian walking unsteadily towards the house, spilling more wine than they're drinking.

"Wait," Eames says to Arthur, remembering suddenly that he has brought something for him.

Arthur stops, with a look on his face that clearly conveys that Eames has seconds before he turns away again, and Eames fumbles at his belt, unlooping his girdle bag and reaching inside for a small, cloth-wrapped parcel.

Arthur watches him impassively as he comes forward, unwrapping two peaches and holding them in Arthur's direction.

"For you," he says, and for an instant—only for an instant, the expression there one moment and gone the next—Arthur's face looks open and vulnerable, confused. Then he looks at Eames, narrowing his eyes.

"Why?" he asks, and Eames shrugs, moving closer.

"Because I wanted to. I can vouch for the fact that they're lovely; I had several at the fair grounds."

He holds the sun-warmed fruit up to Arthur's nose, so that he can smell it, and Arthur inhales deeply, almost as if against his will. Eames pulls one of Arthur's hands free of the reins, and places the two peaches in his palm.

They're standing chest to chest, and Eames allows his eyes to rove over Arthur's face: his dark eyes, and his pink lips, and finally the hollow between his collarbones. He looks up again, keeping his gaze on Arthur's mouth, and leans forward ever so slightly.

Arthur jerks back, looking deeply alarmed, and he fumbles with the peaches and the reins before looking back at Eames. He's angry; there are two spots of colour high on his cheeks.

"I am not a foolish village girl to be wooed with fruit and empty words," he spits, and Eames, light-headed from the wine and the sun, says,

"What about with wax tablets?"

Arthur's nostrils flare.

"I have _absolutely no intention_ of sleeping with you, Sir Thomas—" Eames starts at the unfamiliar name, though there's a thrill to hearing Arthur address him by his given name— "and if you believe that I can be bought with trinkets, no matter how grand or useful they might be, you are _sorely mistaken_."

"Arthur—"

"Furthermore, if you think that just because I have the misfortune of working in your uncle's stables now you have some imagined right over me, if you believe you can take me unwillingly to your bed—"

Eames feels a burst of anger in his own chest, and he leans over Arthur, pressing him back against Algernon, and says,

"You can rest assured, Arthur," leaning forward to look Arthur in the eye, "That I have never had cause or desire to have someone in my bed who wasn't there of his or her own enthusiastic accord. And though if you were to come willingly to my chambers you would be _very welcome_," continues Eames, brushing the back of his hand over Arthur's fingers, which are curled tightly around the peaches and wet with sweetness where the skin of one peach has split, "You can immediately desist to worry that I will somehow wrench your virtue from you."

Arthur must sense Eames' honesty and see that he is truly offended, because he lowers his eyes, saying nothing.

"I do, however," says Eames playfully, uncomfortable with the sight of Arthur repentant and unsure, "reserve the right to _win_ said virtue. And allow me to say that there I have some confidence I might succeed."

Arthur looks up, meeting Eames' eyes angrily, as if his moment of remorse had never been.

"I am equally certain of the opposite, Sir Thomas, and I will have you know that I am not a man prone to changing his mind."

"Arthur," says Eames, reasonably, moving his hand to encircle Arthur's wrist, and tracing the thin skin of the underside with one finger. He smiles solicitously. "All this Sir Thomas business is awfully formal. Eames, please."

And, just as Arthur is taking a breath to no doubt cut Eames to pieces, Eames scurries away, disappearing from the stables before Arthur can have the satisfaction.

 

Prior to Arthur's arrival, Eames had never had a particular stablehand. His cousins all had men who looked specifically after their horses, and Benedict had a page who actually took his horse from the entrance of the house to Benedict's stable boy in the yard, but Eames has always allowed Algernon to be unsaddled by whoever shows up first. He loves his horse, and handsomely rewards those who look after him well; the arrangement has always satisfied him.

Arthur isn't the fastest of the men working in the stable, but he is the most meticulous. In the last weeks Eames' saddle has been consistently polished to a high shine, and his stirrups practically gleam, even in dull light. Algernon's coat is well brushed and glossier than it makes any sense for it to be, considering how much time Eames spends riding around muddy fields on his uncle's business.

He doesn't realise how accustomed he's become to Arthur's methodical manner, but one day he rides up to the stables, and as Michael comes forward to take Algernon, Eames smiles, but yells,

"Arthur!"

Michael holds up a hand good-naturedly, as if to say, _Who am I to get between a horse and its rightful keeper?_, and Eames can see him fighting a grin as Arthur walks slowly out of the stable, chin held high and as disinclined to hurry to Eames' service as ever.

Eames hands Arthur the reins, and then fumbles in the saddlebag.

"For Algernon," he says to Arthur, extracting two apples from the bag, and then, "For you," handing over a light tunic dyed in pale grey.

Eames has been watching a tear at the bottom of one Arthur's tunics work its way steadily upward for the past five days, seemingly resistant to mending.

Arthur raises an eyebrow.

"I outgrew it," says Eames, shrugging, and Arthur hands the apples back to Eames, holding the shirt by the shoulders and shaking it out in the wind.

Eames sees him take in the narrow shoulders and the crisp cloth, the new stitching. Arthur's mouth twitches. When he looks back up at Eames there is no sign of a smile on his face, but his eyes are still dancing.

"I do like the thought of you in my clothes," says Eames, waggling his eyebrows stupidly, and Arthur says,

"Oh, be quiet. They're not your clothes and we both know it. But thank you anyway."

"Does this mean you'll let me watch you put it on?" asks Eames, dropping an arm over Arthur's shoulders as they walk towards Algernon's stall at the back of the stables.

"No," says Arthur, shuffling out from under Eames' arm and beginning to undo the saddle belt. His voice is cooler when he says, "It absolutely does not."

"I don't understand you, Arthur," says Eames. He pitches his voice playfully, but he's half-serious. "How does a man live without ever giving in to pleasure?"

Arthur is quiet as he hangs the saddle on its hook. Then he says,

"Your cousin Julian runs up debts with every merchant in town. Last year he disgraced both the baker's daughter and the blacksmith's wife. I heard that he ordered seven bolts of velvet and silk and cotton from London recently, to have entirely new clothes made for him in the middle of the year. Why don't you partake in any of those pleasures?"

Eames laughs.

"My cousin Julian is the second son of a earl. I am that earl's bastard nephew." He smiles, probably a little bitterly. "The opportunities that are open to us in life are hardly the same."

Arthur looks at him evenly, for a long moment.

"You may be a bastard," he says, not flinching away from the word as another man might, "But you are a bastard whom the earl recognises as his nephew. I am the son of a cobbler. Would you not say that what we two can do in this life is also hardly the same?"

They look at each other for a few silent breaths. Eames can feel Arthur's eyes boring into his, and the skin at the back of his neck prickles.

"I understand," he says, perfectly serious. And then, mischievously, "Does that mean that you're only resisting my considerable charms because of—"

"Oh, get out," says Arthur, motioning exasperatedly towards the stable door.

"All right," says Eames, amiably, because though Arthur is rolling his eyes, there is something like fondness in his voice.

 

When Eames was fourteen, his discovery of what people were truly like underneath their surface pleasantry—particularly when out of sight and earshot of one's powerful uncle—had been quick to lodge itself in his chest like a splinter. When imagining what kind of man might draw him into a friendship as an adult, already wise in the counterfeits of the world, Eames would not have described a man of Arthur's constitution.

But though nothing about the way in which they interact is peaceable, Eames nonetheless finds himself developing an abiding affection for Arthur's prickly, fairly disagreeable self. It is born out of respect for Arthur's sharp mind and his quick tongue, and out of a sense of recognition of his capacity for loyalty, which is not unlike Eames'. It is grounded in the knowledge that Arthur, who has little experience of working in a large household and who, Eames suspects, will never truly abide a master of any sort, no matter the length of his service, always tells the truth.

For weeks after Eames had given his word that he had no intention of drawing Arthur into anything Arthur did not want for his own sake, Arthur had continued to watch him with suspicious eyes, testing the boundaries of Eames' assurance with sharp words and refusals. When Eames had done as he had said he would, and when Arthur's cutting commentary on everything from Eames' half-hearted attempts at seduction to Eames' ability to shod his own horse failed to draw anything more than amusement from him, Arthur had looked at Eames for a long moment, as if to say, _Fine. I can meet you on these terms_.

Ever since then their unspoken understanding has involved mostly half-hearted advances from Eames (he knows better than to spook a skittish horse further) and acerbic after acerbic observation from Arthur. Eames gives as good as he gets, because he, on principle, has never taken a punch (verbal or otherwise) lying down. Not even when outnumbered, lost, and too drunk to see straight in a public house somewhere in Cambridgeshire, and certainly not in his own stableyard.

Like good combatants, though, they also develop a solid system of détentes. Arthur helps Eames compile inventories for his uncle's lands. Eames brings Arthur books that he's recently finished with and then listens to Arthur speak about them, often at stupefying length. They both make fun of Julian and of Eames' other cousins, but whenever they're caught laughing together, Arthur makes excuses and quickly finds somewhere else to be.

It's almost harvest time when Eames' uncle decides to have a jousting tournament. Eames has never completely grasped the logic of these things, but he supposes that when one has tilting lanes, political friendships to upkeep, and more land than one knows what to do with, jousting tournaments seem like reasonable pursuits.

Eames is also more than passably good at it, and more often than not he comes out with some gold for his trouble, so he's as happy as the average man when his uncle announces his plans. Not as happy as Julian, whose habitual heavy drinking at dinnertime makes most things sounds grand; but not as unhappy as Benedict, either, whose pious discipline does not approve of jousting tournaments.

At all.

"What, exactly, is the point of all this?" says Arthur, kneeling to attach Eames' greaves with a great heaving sigh of disgust.

"We hit each other with sticks and then someone gets gold at the end of it, Arthur. Hopefully us."

Arthur looks up at him, curving an eyebrow.

"I can safely say that I want to have no association with this practice whatsoever, gold or not," he says, and Eames pats him on the shoulder, which is clad in his uncle's red and white, and says,

"Too late, I'm afraid."

"No, really," Arthur says, hefting Eames' first lance with surprising ease and motioning him impatiently out the door when Eames tries to take it from him. "What's the purpose here? Of the expense, the social pageantry?"

"Could you _possibly_ try to contain yourself, Arthur?" asks Eames, tightening a vambrace as they walk and trying not to drop his helmet. "I can't think all the fun you allow yourself to have can be good for your health."

Arthur declines to comment, but something in the set of his jaw tells Eames that he was actually expecting an answer, rather than being difficult for sport.

"My uncle has to give the impression of wealth and power," he says as they approach the lists. "This also allows the landed men of the county to release the frustration of any quarrel without having to go through the trouble of the actual quarrel itself, which my uncle would have to arbitrate."

Arthur nods seriously.

"Also," Eames says, stopping to pick up a flower that someone has thrown from the makeshift stands, "My uncle is very rich. I think he gets bored sometimes."

Arthur allows one corner of his mouth to lift up by the tiniest increment. Eames threads the flower through his chainmail.

Julian has just finished tilting, and Eames is about to ask Arthur to fetch Julian's destrier from him when Arthur presses a damp piece of parchment into his hand.

"What's this?" asks Eames, squinting in the bright sunlight.

He can see a series of numbers scribbled in neat lines across the parchment, and he looks at Arthur, confused.

"The other side," says Arthur, as if this should be perfectly obvious, and Eames flips the scrap in his hand to see

_Fitzwilliam. Favours hits to the outside shoulder; drops lance before strike. Left elbow weak._  
Woodville. Drops inside shoulder to allow blow to glance off: strike on outside shoulder.  
Neville. Strikes breastplate; aims to unseat. Thrusting forward to strike first best course.

"What…?" Eames says, and Arthur rolls his eyes as if extremely put upon.

"They've all been here for over a week, Eames," he says, gesturing to the men gathered in the tilting lane.

"Yes…?" says Eames, still unsure of what Arthur is saying.

Arthur jabs a fingers towards the lists, then towards the parchment.

"These are the men you're likely to face in the first three rounds, if you get through and all goes as expected based on my calculations of how they will fare based on skill. Most of the pageboys and the rather astounding number of people these men have brought with them talk, particularly after they've been drinking for a few hours. I have, in an anticipatory move totally foreign to the likes of you, I'm sure, taken advantage of this fact.

After their names, I trust even you can understand that I've listed their weaknesses. I didn't feel able to predict whether you'd go past the third round, or whom you might face if you did, but when you finish your second round I should have a better idea."

Eames grants Arthur one short, very admiring look. Once he is certain Arthur has seen it, he says,

"You are _actually_ the least fun man I've ever met in my life. Having spent some time in your company, I feel I can confidently say this now."

Arthur blows a long-suffering breath out of his nose, and then turns on his heel. He returns a few moments later with Julian's destrier.

"Well, to say that you are by nature the stupidest man I've ever met would not be accurate," he says, holding Eames' gauntlets as Eames pulls his helmet over his head.

Arthur waits for Eames to flip the visor before handing him his gauntlets, and then continues,

"I am convinced, however, that when it comes to the _cultivation_ of stupidity, you really needn't fear that you'll ever meet your match."

"Oh, Arthur," says Eames, raising a gloved hand to his breastplate. "Please, say you'll always be this kind."

"I hope someone knocks you off your horse with a hit to the head," Arthur answers, face blank.

Eames smiles as widely as he can, and puts his foot to the stirrup.

"Well, go on then," he says, because he knows it riles Arthur to be hurried. "Give us a hand."

 

The king takes a late summer progress and summons Eames' uncle to Lincoln, and Eames and his cousins are instructed to accompany him. They ride to Doncaster with the king's party, and only begin the journey home when the king continues to York. The August heat is oppressive: the sun beats down on them relentlessly, and under his doublet Eames can feel trickles of sweat making their way down his back.

They are less than half a day's ride away from home when the weather turns. The temperature drops and a cool wind begins blowing steadily from the northeast as clouds roll in overhead. Eames turns his face into the breeze, content for the first time in days.

In his satchel there are two books for Arthur, as well as a small vial of ink. Eames hopes they make it home just before the rain begins. Then he can shuck off his heavy clothing, stable Algernon, and have just enough time to annoy Arthur before walking to the fields, where he intends to stand for as long as possible, letting the rain streak down his face.

He sees Arthur before he sees his uncle's house. He's a dark shadow against the golden fields, one arm bent to shield his face as he looks down the road. His face is not visible, but Eames knows the angles of his shoulders and his hips, and the darkness of his hair. Eames is quite busy thinking of the endless fodder that this will give him for mockery—"Couldn't wait any longer, could you? Had to make your way down the road to wait for me?"—so he can't quite put his finger on what alerts him to the fact that something is wrong.

Maybe it's the tense line of Arthur's arm and his shoulders, or perhaps it's the fact that he's pacing as he watches the dust that the horses are kicking up. Arthur is not prone to pacing. Eames watches as Arthur takes a step forward and raises a hand, almost as if he's about to call out, and it's the sight of Arthur getting ahead of himself—Eames and his family are much too far to hear anything Arthur says—that makes him certain that something is the matter.

He draws Algernon level with his uncle's horse and asks his uncle's leave to deal with household business. If his uncle thinks the request is odd he doesn't say so; he nods, and Eames spurs Algernon forward. They've been riding for days and the poor horse hardly has anything left in him, but he obediently breaks into a canter, carrying Eames down the road.

Arthur stops moving when he sees Eames break away. At least Eames assumes that Arthur knows it's him, though at that distance he can't be distinguishable from the other men, all dressed in red and white.

"What is it?" he shouts as soon as he can see Arthur's face, which is lined with something much deeper than Arthur's usual thoughtfulness.

Algernon trots to a stop at Arthur's side, and Arthur looks up at Eames and says, quietly,

"My sister-in-law is ill. She took a fever three days ago. The village healer has been, but she says she needs to be bled. James is away—" James is Arthur's older brother, Eames thinks—"And he took the horse, and all the silver we've been saving with him, to buy seed and two pigs. I—"

The sight of Arthur's clenched fists, of his desperately unhappy face—Eames knows that nothing in the world upsets Arthur more than being caught unprepared—makes an answering desperation burst to life somewhere beneath Eames' sternum. He reaches for his satchel and places it in front of him, and moves forward in his saddle. He takes his left foot out of the stirrup and holds a hand down to Arthur.

For a moment there is familiar exasperation on Arthur's face ("If you think I am getting on the back of your horse, Eames, you have another think coming"), but then Arthur is reaching up to grasp Eames' hand, and swinging back to perch at the edge of Eames' saddle. It's not comfortable for either of them, but Eames simply stands in his stirrups to make more room and says,

"Hold on."

The rain, of course, starts halfway to Arthur's brother's fields. It comes down with a vengeance Eames did not expect, matting his hair to his forehead and making his doublet feel as heavy as armour. Arthur's fingers are clenched at Eames' lower back, holding on to his tunic, and Eames can feel how cold his skin is.

Algernon stumbles and trips in the mud as Eames turns him off the road, but he does not falter. Eames leans forward to whisper to him and to pat his neck, and Arthur leans with him, a heavy weight at Eames' back. When they reach James' cottage Arthur dismounts stiffly and Eames follows as quickly as he can, equally stiff in his wet clothing. The thought that Arthur will be the next to catch the fever is heavy at the bottom of Eames' stomach, and he pushes Arthur in front of him, trying to get him in the house.

The cottage is stuffy and hazy with juniper smoke. The village healer is at Arthur's sister-in-law's bed, and she turns a craggy face to look at Eames and Arthur as they enter. Her eyes are sombre.

"Change," Eames says to Arthur, moving to speak to the healer. He empties the contents of his satchel haphazardly on the floor by the fire as he walks past, hoping they can be salvaged.

"I don't have any clothing here," says Arthur through chattering teeth, and Eames turns back around, gripping Arthur by the shoulders and spitting out,

"Go put on some of James', you fool."

Arthur begins rummaging in a small chest, and Eames stalks forward to the bedside, careful not to drip on the bedclothes.

"I've rubbed her with water and vinegar," says the healer, shaking her head. "But I think now she needs to be bled. The physician is at home, but he would not come without payment, even though I told him this family was in the earl's service."

Eames is not surprised. He nods, and heads back towards the door. He fumbles at his doublet's laces with stiff fingers, not seeing the point in continuing to wear the sodden thing. He's contemplating slicing through the ties, but then Arthur's fingers are there, undoing the knots and pushing the velvet off Eames' shoulders.

When Eames opens the door, Algernon is standing by a tree, not moving despite the fact that Eames did not tether him. Eames says,

"I'll be back as soon as I can," and Arthur nods.

He does not say anything in reply, but his long fingers circle Eames' wrist and squeeze once.

The physician is not inclined to ride out into the storm when Eames gets there, but Eames uses a combination of his size and his name to frighten a younger man in the house, probably the physician's son, into fetching another horse. Eames rides at the physician's left flank the whole way back to Arthur's brother's house, urging both horses to trot faster.

The bleeding requires the physician to draw the bedclothes back from Arthur's sister-in-law's bed—"Anne," says Arthur quietly. "Her name is Anne"—and so Eames and Arthur leave the physician to his business, with the healer to supervise.

The process takes some time, and Eames and Arthur huddle unhappily by the door, facing the wall. They sit in silence, doing their best to ignore the sounds coming from the bed. It's hard to hear anything but the rain, but every once in a while Anne will let loose a dry, reedy scream, and Eames and Arthur will say nothing, though Eames does not think he's imagining the way Arthur curls a little further against him, although it's almost imperceptible.

When the physician is done, Eames pays him generously enough for his trouble that he only grumbles minimally about having to ride home in the rain. The healer declares she will stay the night—Eames gathers she is Arthur's mother's friend—and Eames shuffles awkwardly towards the fire to pick up his bag, his damp clothes still clinging to him uncomfortably.

Arthur crouches next to him, helping Eames place his things back in his satchel. When he picks up the two books, which Eames is happy to find are hardly damp at all after their time in front of the fire, and moves to put them in the bag, Eames waves him off with one hand. He's too tired to explain, but Arthur seems to understand. They repeat the same process with the ink. When they stand up, there's an odd, bitter twist to Arthur's mouth.

Eames dips his head towards the healer. Anne is asleep. As they reach the door, Arthur looks at him, and says, crossly,

"I gave all the silver to James. How could I have done that?"

Eames wants to mock him, but all he can offer at this point is a tired smile.

"You're right, Arthur," he says after a moment of silence, in which Arthur does not slide his eyes from Eames'. Eames is apparently unable to resist the temptation of at least a small amount of ridicule. "You should absolutely have foreseen that Anne would fall ill with a fever, that the healer would be unable to do anything, that my uncle and his household would be away with the king for an extra day, that the physician wouldn't come on your or the healer's word, and that Anne would worsen. How could you not have known?"

Arthur shakes his head at him, not rising to the bait. He seems truly angry.

"No," he says tightly. "You don't understand. I gave all the silver to James, and he'll spend it on the seed and the pigs."

Eames leans forward a little, encouraging Arthur to keep going. When Arthur stays silent, he prompts,

"And…?"

"And we can't pay you back, Eames," Arthur spits, in one angry rush. "Not now, not this year. Judging by the amount of coin you gave the physician, possibly not ever."

Eames feels an odd combination of things: frustration, and wry amusement, and anger, and exhaustion, and, almost unwillingly, affection. He doesn't say anything. He just gives Arthur a long, silent look, which he thinks will more than communicate how he feels about Arthur's foolishness.

"Yes," says Arthur, after a moment. "Sorry. I— Yes."

Eames snorts.

"Thank you, is what I'm trying to say," Arthur finishes waspishly.

Eames places a hand on Arthur's shoulder, and says,

"I'll send Michael or Matthew on when I get home. Get them to fetch me if you need. Don't come back until James returns." Then, "She'll be fine, Arthur."

Arthur drops a cheek towards Eames' hand, but reverses the movement almost as soon as it begins. He flushes. Eames raises his knuckles and brushes them once against Arthur's face, and then he whistles for Algernon.

Algernon plods out of the shadows, looking disgruntled, and Eames pats his neck and his flank once more before he mounts.

He looks at Arthur one more time, standing against the light of the doorway. Then he forces himself to cluck tiredly at Algernon, and begins the long ride home.

 

The daughter of a minor nobleman whose lands are at the western fringes of Eames' uncle's is married, and the man sends a rider to extend an invitation. It wouldn't really do for Eames' uncle or Benedict to attend, and Julian and William have plans to go hunting. Robert dislikes most social gatherings that don't involve his brothers, and when Eames' uncle looks at him, he raises a hand, not looking up from his letters, and points at Eames.

"Will you go, Thomas?" asks his uncle, and Eames, who can't see why anyone would go out of his way to avoid a party, says,

"Of course, uncle."

His uncle suggests that Eames take Matthew with him. Benedict looks over from where he's going over accounts with the steward and says,

"Eames has his own stable hand now, father. The boy whose brother has lands across the creek."

Eames' uncle shakes his head as if to indicate his utter disinterest, and says,

"Fine. Take the new boy, then."

"Yes, uncle," says Eames, obediently. "But I'm going to need to borrow a horse."

 

"If you can give me a single reason why it makes sense for me to go to this thing, I'll come," says Arthur.

He is shovelling hay into Algernon's stall.

"It's a whole morning's ride through the flattest, driest part of my uncle's lands, and you're very pleasant to look at," says Eames, immediately.

Arthur looks at him, unimpressed.

"If you expect me to endure your company for a whole morning, I'm going to need an actual reason."

"You spend whole mornings with me all the time," says Eames. "That doesn't even make sense."

"Not voluntarily," says Arthur.

"Yes voluntarily," says Eames. "Last week I was supervising work in the fields and you came to fetch me when it was time to eat."

Arthur opens his mouth as if to retort, then settles for turning his attention back to the hay.

Eames smiles. He thinks for a moment, then says,

"I know you want me to give you a reason for riding half a day to drink at someone's wedding, tiring two horses instead of one and leaving the stable one pair of hands short, which doesn't make sense to you. I don't really have one. My uncle told me to take someone with me, probably to give the impression that I'm more important than I am, and I suspect I really will get horrendously bored on my own. I might be forced to start drinking _on the way_."

Arthur has some sort of irrational notion that drinking while riding always results in being murdered by bandits. Eames has tried to make sense of it ("I don't understand, Arthur; did bandits seize you as a child? Did they take you away from your sums and reading and force you to play in the fields?"), to no avail.

It works immediately; Eames swallows a laugh at the sight of Arthur's outraged face only by sheer force of will.

"I don't have a horse," says Arthur. A beat later, "And before you ask, no, I am not riding with you."

"Now, Arthur, it really isn't as unpleasant as all that, is it?"

"That was the once, Eames, and Anne was ill."

"Well, actually," says Eames, thinking of the night two weeks ago when he had ridden Arthur back to his parents' house in the village, after night had fallen while they'd still been working on the inventories in Eames' rooms, and of the Thursday before, when Arthur had found Eames in the fields and let him know his uncle was looking for him, and wanted Eames to hurry back.

"Eames," says Arthur. His tone is low and dangerous. "That was the once."

"Of course it was," says Eames, genially, willing to do his part to keep the peace. "I remember now. Anyway, you needn't worry: Matthew has already found you a horse."

 

On the way to the festivities, they ride past the mulberry brambles at the edge of the forest. Arthur keeps his face turned away from Eames when he says,

"When I was a child, my father sometimes brought me here, in the summer. When your uncle said we could."

The mulberry brambles are a half-mile long stretch of mulberry bushes that, by all accounts, began growing of their own accord in the time of Eames' great-uncle. Each year they produce bucketloads of fruit, and Eames' family has always allowed the villagers and the nearby farmers to come pick their own in the late summer, provided they don't abuse the privilege.

"When _I_ was a boy," Eames counters, "sometimes my uncle would send me and my youngest cousins with whomever the steward sent to sell the mulberries at market, in Peterborough."

He pauses.

"My cousins would always get bored and run off to do something else, but I would always help with the selling. Sometimes I would sneak a coin when the person in charge wasn't looking."

"Sometimes?" asks Arthur, arching an eyebrow.

"Or every time," says Eames. "One of the two; I can't quite remember."

"They never caught you?"

"I made sure to always stay in plain sight of them, so I was always the least likely culprit," says Eames. "I'll have you know that I have _extremely_ quick hands, Arthur. Perhaps I can show you, one day."

Arthur's nose twitches, which usually means that he wants to chastise Eames for making an inappropriate comment, but doesn't want to admit he has noticed the comment's inappropriate nature in the first place.

"Why did you do it?" he asks eventually, turning to look at Eames. "What if you'd been caught?"

Eames shrugs.

"At first I wasn't sure if I might fall out of my uncle's favour," he says. "He loved my mother very much, but that was never a guarantee. Better to be caught stealing with some silver put away than to be sent away and caught without silver."

Arthur keeps looking at him, as if he knows there's more to the story. There is.

"I used to keep all my coin at the tip of a boot under a loose floorboard," Eames says. "I kept adding to it until the year my mother died."

"And then you stopped?" Arthur asks.

Eames does not want to avoid a direct question, but neither does he want to say something Arthur does not want to hear.

"And then… I was old enough to have a trade, whether my uncle welcomed me in his household or not. But."

"But?" asks Arthur.

Eames is still reluctant to continue. Arthur waits him out.

"I have always liked a challenge," says Eames. "And some part of me has never forgotten what it was like being told I could never have things, simply because of who I was. Because of my birth. So… sometimes I would take things, simply because I could. Not from my uncle, of course, who in the end, it turns out, has shown me nothing but the kindness I didn't expect from him as a boy. And not from anyone who didn't deserve it."

Arthur's mouth is pursed. Unsurprisingly, he does not approve.

"It's what I was best at," says Eames, shrugging. "However unconventional the skill might have been."

He cannot find it in himself to feel ashamed, though Arthur's displeased face brings him as close to it as he's ever been.

"I know you are skilled with numbers and with inventories, Arthur, but there is something in this world, though you may not yet have found it, that will call to you in a way no other thing does, because you can do it in a way no other man can. It is not easy to resist that call, even if it comes from a place that you might not have chosen for yourself. I would argue that it does not always make sense to."

Arthur's face loses some of its critical cast. When he looks at Eames, however, his eyes are still calculating.

"Don't look at me as if I rob old people and children by night," says Eames. "Because I do not. And I have not, in fact, taken something that was not mine by right since I was a teenager."

There is a long silence. They ride through it companionably until Arthur turns to him, and says,

"We are different."

He gives a slow, grave nod, as if considering his own statement.

"Yes," Eames agrees. "We are."

"I wonder what it means," says Arthur, "that I do not care. Not even when you say things like this."

He sounds honestly surprised, and Eames cannot help a smile.

Sometimes Arthur, who has spent an age considering each of life's possible eventualities, is wonderfully young.

"The things you bring me," says Arthur suddenly, turning to him. "They aren't…?"

"Like I said," says Eames. "I haven't done it in a very long time. Now, if you want me to steal or otherwise behave improperly for you, you only have to ask," he continues, only half-joking. "But no— I haven't done it yet."

 

It's the looks, at first, that tip Eames off to the fact that something is happening. The house has been busy with a visit from the Earl Marshal, and Eames has been cheerfully enjoying the freedom that comes with this kind of affair. Everyone in the house—from Eames' aunt and uncle to the cooks—has his or her full attention on attending to the Earl's every whim; this usually means that Eames can do as he likes.

His uncle has expressly ordered him to make himself scarce: the Earl Marshal has a son, and to say that there is no love lost between him and Eames would be a gross understatement. Eames once (very) narrowly avoided being run through by the Earl's guards after a fight with the Earl's son, whose name is also Thomas. He did manage to get two very satisfying punches in before Benedict had to step in, though.

For the past week, Eames has been moving through the corridors like a shadow, doing his best to avoid the Earl's retinue and spending most of his time in the fields or the village. He's attempting to continue to do just that when he catches Ella and Mary, who tend his aunt's rooms, looking at him and whispering. When the episode is repeated in the next corridor—this time it's Henry, his uncle's page, who doesn't whisper, but stares fixedly at Eames as he walks past—Eames begins to get the unpleasant feeling that he's done something—though he doesn't know what—and that he's about to end up on the wrong end of his uncle's wrath.

It's a silly habit, assuming he's in trouble before he knows the details and when he hasn't done anything, but that doesn't stop Eames from walking more quickly towards the kitchen, trying to make his way out of the house. When his aunt's clear, high voice calls,

"Thomas; a minute, if you will?" in what Eames thinks is a deceptively pleasant voice, he curses softly before turning, saying,

"Of course, Aunt Catherine," and heading towards her chambers, from where she is beckoning to him with one elegant finger.

He's surprised when he walks in to find his uncle sitting in his aunt's greeting room, looking out a window. Benedict is also there, and Julian is sitting in a corner. He smiles enthusiastically when Eames walks in: the scene is ominous enough without it, but at the sight of Julian's grin, Eames knows immediately that something has actually happened.

"How hard can it be, Thomas, to avoid vexing the Earl's son for one week? One week, Thomas—seven days. Could you explain to me why that isn't possible for you?"

Eames starts at the sound of his uncle's voice. He lets the activities of the past few days shuffle quickly through his mind. When he cannot come up with any reason why his uncle should be cross, he says, simply,

"Uncle?"

"You know I have no objections to you or your cousins doing as you will with the men and women in your service, as long as you treat them with the respect they deserve."

"I do," says Eames cautiously. He does not want to commit himself to anything before his uncle makes things clearer.

His uncle heaves a long-suffering sigh, but if Eames is not mistaken, there's something like a smile in his eyes, despite his otherwise stern demeanour. His aunt is doing a poorer job of hiding her amusement; she has turned her face towards Benedict, but Eames can see a smile in the curve of her cheek.

"Really, cousin, awfully selfish of you," says Julian, still grinning.

"Could I trouble you to say what—?" Eames begins, but his uncle interrupts.

"It's one thing not to want the Earl's son to interact with our servants in any considerable manner," he says. "I think we can all agree that avoiding that is a wish this entire family shares."

Two years ago, during another one of these visits, Benedict had found the Earl's son in his rooms, pressing Benedict's unhappy scribe into a corner. Benedict had said nothing, simply requesting the scribe's help with something elsewhere in the house, but that's how the business with Eames and the Earl's son had originally begun, after a chance meeting in an inn.

Eames nods at his uncle, beginning to get some idea of what this might be about. If this is going where he thinks it might be, he can safely say that the peace his uncle has asked him to keep with the other Thomas is, as of this moment, a thing of the past.

"Despite that," his uncle continues, holding up a finger at the sight of the changing expression on Eames' face, "I am sure you can understand that some subtlety might have served us all well, in this matter."

"Uncle," says Eames. "It is my experience that the Earl's son has considerable trouble understanding anything that even approaches subtlety, but I really have done my best this week—"

"Really, Thomas," says his aunt, speaking for the first time. "Why not send the boy home for the week, if the other Thomas was causing trouble? Was it really necessary to make a spectacle in front of all the Earl's men? In front of our entire household? Right as we were all returning from the gardens? I cannot imagine how you could have made a bigger hash of this. Whatever _possessed_ you to tell that boy to say that? Your capacity for making trouble is not inconsiderable, Thomas, but even I must say that this has been by far your finest hour. If we can call it that."

Eames clenches his jaw.

"Aunt Catherine, I haven't—"

"The look on his _face_, though," says Julian, gleefully. "I mean, it wasn't the wisest thing to do, needless to say, but good heavens, I would almost say it was worth it, just for the look on his face."

"It was quite good," Benedict acknowledges, quietly.

His small smile seems like a foreign thing on his usually grave face.

"What did he say again?" asks Julian, and Eames looks between them, trying to glean enough information to know what grievance it is, exactly, that he can add to his long list of resentments against the Earl's son.

"'I am in the _service_ of Sir Thomas,'" begins Benedict, quietly.

Julian laughs. Even Eames' uncle smiles.

"'And I would advise you, sire, that he does not take kindly to interference from any man. No matter who that man might be.'"

Julian is positively hooting by now. Eames can imagine it: the haughty, inappropriate, insulting tilt of Arthur's jaw; the icy contempt with which he would have made every word drip.

"Cool as a king in his own hall, as if he weren't speaking to a man ten times his better," says Benedict. "Of course you had to go and find someone just as bad as you, Eames."

"Of course," says Eames, unaccountably amused.

"Memorable looks on the Earl's son's face aside," his uncle cuts in, seriously, "It was really a very foolish thing to do, Eames. Now, I understand that this boy may be… special to you, and far be it from me to tell you what to do in that regard—" His uncle would not hesitate to intervene for an instant, if the circumstances of Eames' birth were different, but Eames finds that in this instance, that old bitterness is fairly easy to bear— "but you _will_ apologise to the Earl's son. And though I only gave the impression that the boy was to be punished, because god knows he is not at fault here; only you could have put him up this madness—" _Indeed_, Eames thinks wryly, _Only I_— "I trust you will handle the matter with some delicacy, going forward. Have him take two or three lashes—"

Eames has no idea what his face looks like, but his uncle stops mid-sentence, then says,

"Or send him home and say he took two or three lashes; I don't care. Just give the impression that the matter has been dealt with, will you?"

Eames looks around the room. They're all looking seriously at him, but the air of amusement that Eames noticed as soon as he walked in has not entirely faded.

The look on Thomas' face really must have been something.

He smiles.

"Of course, uncle," he says, bowing ever so slightly. "I'll do so. And… I apologise."

"Oh, Eames," says his uncle affectionately, the way he used to when Eames was a child, and would return muddied from the forest in the clothes his uncle had gifted him with just that morning. "I wish I could find it in myself to be stricter, because we all know we can't afford to upset the Earl Marshal, but really… you should have seen the look on his face."

 

Eames is not surprised when he walks into the stables and finds them seemingly empty. He has already stopped at the Earl's rooms on the way, to apologise more than once to the Earl himself, citing attachments and foolishness: _I'm sure, sire, that you can…_, complete with self-conscious smile and embarrassed slope of the neck. Thomas had glared murderously at him the entire time, but Eames had been the picture of remorse, and Thomas had been unable to do anything but stand by as the Earl accepted Eames' apology, saying,

"I remember what it was like to be young, Master Thomas, and to feel…"

Something about his face had suggested to Eames that the Earl, too, might have enjoyed the look on Thomas' face.

Eames makes his way to the back of the building, where he can hear the soft brush of bristles over hair. Arthur does not look up when Eames enters Algernon's stall, but Eames knows that Arthur knows he's there. His shoulders are hunched, and there is a bright flush making its way up his neck.

Eames does not say anything. Eventually Arthur finishes brushing Algernon's coat. He moves to put the brush in its place, still silent. When that is done, he looks at his hands for a long moment—they are interlaced in front of him, and he's clearly fighting the urge to wring them—before looking up.

Eames gives him a long, cool look. Arthur blushes to the roots of his hair, but does not look away.

"Darling," says Eames, evenly. "I cannot be sure, you understand, what with our long history of passion clouding my judgment as fully as it has—"

Arthur has the good grace to lower his eyes, ever so slightly.

"But," says Eames, smiling because he just can't help it, because Arthur's sheer daring deserves copious quantities of admiring acknowledgement, "It is my impression that you called?"

 

It's funny, and yet it isn't at all.

Eames sends Arthur home to his parents' for two days, but when the Earl Marshal decides to extend his stay, Eames has no choice but to call Arthur back.

"The Earl and his family won't be returning home before meeting the king on his journey to London," says Eames, when Arthur walks into the stables on Thursday.

Arthur's back is perfectly straight, and his face gives nothing away. Eames takes this to mean that people have been staring at him again.

"I need to report to my uncle on the harvest in the northern and southern fields, and I could use the help making sense of the records the steward gave me. I'm sure there was a time when I knew perfectly well how to manage this myself," he says, self-deprecatingly, "But alas, it appears that time is no longer. Sorry you had to come back."

Arthur gives him a small nod. Eames smiles fondly at him, walking towards him and brushing a hand carefully over the curve of his shoulder.

"They'll forget, Arthur," he says. "Don't give them a reason not to."

Arthur crumples his face into an unhappy frown, and suddenly—just like that—Eames realises that keeping the smile on his own face is taking considerable effort.

"It's not to say that I could ever be easily forgotten, of course," he teases, though his heart isn't quite in it. He's trying to make sense of what he feels, which means that his mind is only half on what he's saying.

"No, Arthur, but speaking truly: you need only keep the pretence up for a few more days, until the Earl and his wretched son are gone."

"I'm not—"

Arthur makes an incoherent, frustrated sound low in his throat, as if he can't take a moment more of it. Eames has never known him to really lose his temper (though he suspects it will be something to watch, whenever it does happen), and he doesn't do so then. He only frowns more heavily and kicks at a bale of hay with the tip of his foot, almost like an afterthought.

"Come, now, don't be like that, pet," says Eames, peaceably.

Arthur narrows his eyes at the name, and says, crossly but clearly amused despite himself,

"Oh, be _quiet_."

Eames shrugs good-naturedly.

"Not that I like to be the one to say it, darling," he says, meaning the opposite, "But you _are_ the one who informed the household of our secret assignation, of the long hours we've spent putting together… inventories. Of the way in which you have sometimes allowed me to press you into sweet-smelling hay, and—"

Arthur's eyes blaze, cutting Eames off mid-mockery.

"What," he says coolly, looking up at Eames through narrowed eyes and letting his words come like a challenge, "You'd rather I had told him he could do as he pleased?"

Eames doesn't think about it. When he looks up he's already taken three steps, and he's trapped Arthur into a corner by Algernon's stall. He's not entirely sure how he got there.

"You know perfectly well that—" he begins, but then the sight of Arthur's wide eyes and parted lips makes him lose track of what he means to say.

Arthur is breathing quickly, and Eames feels his own breath speed up in response.

"What? I know perfectly well what?" Arthur asks in a low voice, and Eames presses one hand against one of Arthur's wrists, holding it against the wall. Arthur's skin is warm beneath Eames' fingers, and feels parchment-thin: Eames can feel the rapid tremble of Arthur's pulse.

Arthur's eyes will not settle on Eames'. He looks down at their hands, and at the collar of Eames' tunic, and over Eames' shoulder at the wide corridor of the stables.

In response, Eames looks carefully at Arthur's face. He looks for any sign that Arthur is unhappy, or hesitant. Arthur does look unsure, but the lines of his forehead, and his mouth, and at corners of his eyes, are smooth.

"I," says Eames, a little dry-mouthed. "I—"

"Oh, _Eames_," says Arthur suddenly, going completely pliant against Eames' chest.

Eames starts.

"What…?" he asks, confused, because he knows Arthur, and where a minute ago he was unsure but relaxed, now he _seems_ utterly willing, but Eames can tell he's actually nervous, unyielding.

Arthur winds the hand that Eames isn't holding down upwards to curl in Eames' tunic, and pulls him forward slowly.

Eames allows himself to be led. He breathes deeply against Arthur's neck, and Arthur curves himself into Eames, putting his lips to Eames' ear.

"He's watching," he whispers, all breath and practically no sound, and Eames fights the urge to laugh at how quickly this has turned ridiculous.

"What?" he says, speaking equally quietly against Arthur's hair. "_Who_?"

"The other Thomas," says Arthur, so venomously that Eames can't help laughing any longer, and does.

He tries to disguise it, pressing closer to Arthur. Arthur winds his right foot up and curls his heel against Eames' calf, and Eames shudders closer without thinking.

"I hate that man," he says, holding himself still against Arthur and running the tip of one finger against Arthur's collarbone.

"Yes," says Arthur, tilting his head back ever so slightly. "I know."

Eames is just thinking about pressing his lips against the soft skin of Arthur's neck—they need to pass the time somehow—when Arthur relaxes against him. His body tenses, and his knees lock, but Eames can tell he's more at ease than he was a moment ago.

"He's gone," Arthur says, still quietly.

Eames nods, and takes a small step back. Arthur is looking at him steadily, a tiny smile playing in the dips of his cheeks.

Eames smiles back, trying to regain some sense of footing. He's happy the other Thomas is gone; unfortunately, so is whatever was pulling them together before he arrived, like a fragile, thin strand of silk.

"I hate that man," he repeats, shaking his head, reaching down to brush some imaginary dust from his breeches.

He shuffles a little, and sees Arthur's feet doing the same. His boots are scuffing swirls in the dust.

Eames looks up.

Arthur's eyes are warm as they watch him, and the air between them is heavy with unsaid things.

It's funny, the entire thing. And yet it also isn't—not at all.

 

Eames cannot believe that he might have spent a lifetime without knowing this side of Arthur.

He knows Arthur is capable of mischief, and that it only takes moments for his mind to pick up a challenge and emerge one step ahead. He knows that it is easy to make Arthur laugh, once one understands how to do it. He knows that Arthur smiles in secret even when nothing shows on his face.

What he did not know was that Arthur could delight in things. That he could pick up a game _because_ it was a game, and not because it could be won. That his mouth could soften and that he could look, for long moments, unguarded and carefree and so _young_.

Arthur tucks himself into narrow spaces, moving in to tighten Algernon's saddle belt when Eames has already approached Algernon to mount. He watches the other Thomas' angry approaches with assessing eyes, doing nothing, but at the last instant he turns the tip of his nose into Eames' neck, or steps just that tiny, infuriating step closer. Sometimes, when they are alone, when no-one is watching, he sits next to Eames on a bale of hay, and in the middle of Eames saying something, he slides his hand just close enough for their fingers to touch.

Eames breathes slowly through his nose. He swallows more than is necessary. He smiles less than he wants to, and when Arthur bends closer, he always, always, makes space.

"It can't be for gratitude," he says, desperately, thinking of all his ridiculous trinkets, lined up one against the other, and of Anne's cheerful, pleasant face.

"It can't be for duty. Please," he says, clenching his fingers in his own tunic, trying to make sure that the other Thomas, who is watching as Michael saddles his own horse nearby, does not overhear.

Arthur curls the tips of his fingers against Eames', and pulls Eames' hands open like flower petals unfurling.

"It's not," he says softly. "It was never."

 

His uncle takes the Earl Marshal and his cousins hunting, and Eames remains because there is business for him in the fields. He's walking back to the house and staring unthinkingly at the sky when Ella seemingly appears out of nowhere, calling for him. He waves as she approaches, and she smiles prettily at him.

"Sir Thomas," she says, bending her knees slightly, and Eames narrows his eyes meaningfully at her.

"Eames," she says, laughing a little, and he says,

"Yes, Ella?"

"Your aunt wishes to speak to you," she says, and Eames nods.

"She's in the house?"

"In the gardens behind the kitchens."

The corridors of the house are dark compared to the bright sunlight of the courtyard, and Eames stumbles a little as he walks in. Ella smiles at him, with that warm fondness that Eames is becoming increasingly familiar with on other people's faces, and says,

"There's to be a performance tonight at supper, I've heard. I think that's why the Lady Catherine wants you."

Eames' aunt is directing several people as they cut roses from her bushes, and she does not turn to look at Eames right away. When she finally does, her face is flushed from the sun, and soft with the same familiar affection.

"Thomas," she says, motioning to the kitchens.

He follows her to the door, and the two of them stand in the shadow of the cool stone, trying to escape the heat.

"Your cousins tell me that there's a troupe in the village," she says, fanning her face with one hand. "Performers and _magicians_," she says, laughing a little as she says the last word.

Eames has heard something similar; he nods.

"I spoke to your uncle before they left yesterday, and as the Earl Marshal will be leaving us at week's end, we thought we would organise something special for him this evening, when he and your cousins and uncle return."

"Yes, Aunt Catherine," says Eames. "Of course. Ella says you need my help?"

"Your boy," she says, and Eames thinks for an instant that she's about to open up another strand of conversation entirely. He tenses slightly, but then she continues, "He is lettered, yes?"

"He was apprenticed to the shire reeve's steward before he came to your ladyship's household," he says.

"Good," she replies, drawing some parchment from a fold in her dress. "Will you send him for the performers? Tell him to deliver this, if they can read, and to explain to them, if they cannot. We'll offer lodging and a meal and payment, if they'll come tonight."

Eames nods again.

"I need you to do the rounds with the merchants, and quickly. The kitchen has done most of what I asked, but we'll need more fruit, and a new cloth hanging for the wall by the windows. Can you hurry?"

Eames' aunt has a tendency to think of things at the very last minute. She is very like Eames' mother was, in that sense, and Eames has always loved her for it.

"Yes, Aunt Catherine," he says, bending to brush a kiss on her cheek. "I will hurry."

Arthur is reading a book by the stable door when Eames walks up. Eames' family took most of the horses hunting, and most of the stablehands went to assist the riders, so the yard and the stable itself are both quiet.

"Hello," says Eames, and Arthur gives him a slow, lazy smile, glancing quickly down at his book before closing it.

They stand too close to each other. If they ever stood another way, Eames has forgotten it.

"Can you come into the village with me?" Eames asks, quietly.

Eames has spent a life speaking more loudly than is necessary, but in the last few days, he has often felt as if near-silence is the only thing that will do.

"Why?" asks Arthur, smiling and being difficult for the sake of it, and Eames counters,

"Why not?"

"Maybe I'm busy," says Arthur.

For every teasing word that has been stolen from Eames, Arthur seems to have been granted one.

"Are you?" asks Eames.

His hand is hovering, cupped, just above Arthur's hip. Arthur glances down at it, and moves so that he fits into the groove of Eames' hand.

"No," he says. "I'm not."

Eames hands him his aunt's parchment, and says,

"My aunt wants you to bring the performers from the village back to the house. I have to collect a few things for her, but you can return before me. Do you know where they're lodging?"

"The _dream-weavers_?" asks Arthur, mockingly. His voice sounds the same as Eames' aunt's had, when she had said _magicians_. "Yes. They're at the Cat and Eagle, but they've also got two carts with their things, for travelling. Shall I get them to come with everything?"

"I don't see why not," says Eames, looking down to find his thumb running against the soft skin between Arthur's breeches and his tunic.

Eames wants the night to be over. He wants the performers to have come and gone. He wants the Earl Marshal and the other Thomas away to London. He wants whatever it is they're waiting for to make itself known.

He wants.

"When I return," says Arthur,

"You'll let me welcome you home?" asks Eames, teasing.

Arthur gives him another slow smile: it is almost as if his face melts around it.

"Maybe," he says, stepping away from Eames and heading towards Algernon's stall. "Or maybe we can speak about the book you gave me yesterday."

He holds up the book as he walks, turning his wrist and moving it back and forth.

"Arthur," says Eames, happily. "We can do whatever you want."

 

Eames' first glimpse of the performers is actually the line of Arthur's neck.

He's delivered a bolt of cloth to his aunt, and told the cooks when to expect riders from the village. His aunt tells him that she's put Arthur in charge of accommodating the performers' needs until that evening, and Eames goes to look for them, more curious than he really cares to admit.

There are two carts pushed under the shade of the beech trees behind the stables, and two horses are tethered nearby, drinking from large pails of water. One of the carts is painted in bright colours, and the other is covered in an equally bright blue cloth. Eames can see legs moving on the other side of the coloured cart, and two people are standing at the back of the other, under the shelter of the blue covering. The cart's back panel has been opened, and they are leaning against the slat of wood, reading or perhaps writing something, if the movement of their arms is anything to go by.

One man is a stranger. The other is Arthur, and his head is curved steeply towards whatever the other man is showing him. The muscles in his neck and his shoulders are tense: he is concentrating, and Eames recognises fascination in the speed of his nods, and in the movement of his hands.

"Hello," he hears someone call behind him, and he turns to see a young woman dressed in a light green shift. Her hair is long and dark, and she has intelligent eyes nestled underneath a high, elegant forehead.

"Hello," says Eames, and Arthur and the man he is speaking to turn at the sound of his voice.

They approach Eames and the woman as one, and the man inclines his head slightly, and says, respectfully,

"Sir Thomas."

"Please," says Eames, holding up a hand and looking between him and Arthur. "Any friend of Arthur's…"

He's testing, cautious, trying to figure out what Arthur might have told the other man. The two of them are clearly at ease with each other already, and there are ink smudges on Arthur's fingertips, from where he and the man have been writing against the cart's boards.

"Mmh. Eames, then," says the man, smiling widely. Eames can't decide if he's happy or disgruntled to hear the man change his address, though it means Arthur must have spoken about Eames to him already. "I'm Dominic Cobb."

"I am very pleased you could come on such short notice," says Eames, still careful. "And my aunt is more pleased still. I thank you."

Arthur is looking at him warily, as if trying to gauge his mood. His eyes flick between Eames and Cobb, and Eames smiles at him, very slightly.

"Arthur?"

"Dominic is explaining to me how it will work tonight," he says. He motions to the cart behind him with one arm; his eyes are lively and focused. "It's fascinating, Eames."

Eames nods. He's happy to see Arthur so animated, though he plans to remind Arthur of how derisively he called these people _dream-weavers_, only hours earlier.

"You have everything you need?" he asks Cobb, and Cobb slides his eyes from Arthur to Eames.

"We do," he says. "Arthur has been very helpful. Ah!"

He has seen someone behind Eames, and he waves them forward with a smile.

Another woman appears from Eames' back. She is beautiful, and her eyes are startling. When she looks at Eames her gaze is piercing: not in the way people usually and carelessly suggest a look can be, but truly penetrating, in a way Eames has never experienced before.

"My wife, Mallorie," says Cobb, and Eames bows his head in her direction, embarrassingly quick to slide his eyes away. "And you have already met the Lady Ariadne," Cobb continues, pointing at the woman who first approached Eames.

Eames turns quizzical eyes on her, and she says, offhandedly, "Third daughter of Sir Miles Bradley, of Bath." She shrugs. "I was to be married the week after Mallorie and Dominic came to my father's house. They offered an alternative. It seemed preferable, so I took it."

Eames looks at her again: at her proud bearing, and her calloused hands. He dips his head at her too, admiring.

Two more men have appeared from behind the brightly-coloured cart. They are laughing together, and Cobb motions them forward as well.

"Master Yusuf," he says, pointing to one, "and Master Saito. This is Sir Thomas; this is his uncle's manor."

Yusuf and Saito nod at Eames, and he smiles and nods back, trying to infuse the gesture with as much sincerity as possible. He cannot put his finger on why he feels so uneasy around Cobb and the other performers—these other people, who are clearly Cobb's family, if the way they look at each other is anything to go by—but he is suddenly eager to get back to the house, and to have a moment to think.

"You are very welcome here," he says. "I have business to attend to at the house, but please say if you require anything before tonight. We have prepared—"

"We will lodge with our things and our carts, Sir Thomas," says Mallorie, smiling. "But thank you."

"Of course," says Eames. "Arthur?" he asks again, and Arthur gives him an indecipherable look. His eyes shoot to Cobb, and Eames suddenly understands what Arthur wants, and pinpoints the source of his own uneasiness.

"You'll stay with Master Cobb and fetch me if anything is required?" he says, and Arthur smiles at him gratefully.

Eames tries to ignore the uncomfortable twist of his stomach as he smiles back.

"Thank you for sending Arthur to us," says the Lady Ariadne, turning kind eyes towards Eames. "It is sometimes hard to know what to prepare for an evening, especially when we have not been in a place long. He has been marvellously helpful."

"That's Arthur," says Eames wryly, unable to dislike people who so plainly appreciate Arthur's mind, and his ability to worm himself into places and pockets of knowledge where he doesn't belong.

The afternoon sun is filtering through the beech leaves, warming Eames' face. Eames lifts a hand in farewell, repeating his request that they inform him if they need anything, and spins on his heel to head back towards the house. As he does so, the sun slants sharply into his eyes, and he blinks, startled. He hears Cobb's wife take a sharp breath, and the man Cobb introduced as Saito says, softly,

"Forger."

"Excuse me?" he asks, curious.

"It's nothing," says Cobb, smiling genially. His eyes are trained on Eames', however, and when Eames turns to look at Arthur, his lips are parted and his eyebrows are knitted, as if he has gleaned some meaning from Saito's word.

Eames raises an enquiring eyebrow, but Arthur shakes his head slightly, as if to confirm, _It's nothing_.

"All right," says Eames, awkwardly, thinking of Arthur's earlier departure, and of the wonderful, warm thing that had been between them then. It has been superseded by the dynamic Cobb and his people have brought with them, by the energy of the unknown; it is not, however, gone. It thrums gently between them when Arthur turns one corner of his mouth up, looking directly at Eames.

"Well," Eames says, raising his hand again, returning Arthur's intent look. "I really must go. But you are most welcome again."

 

It's hard to say, after, precisely what it was like. One minute Yusuf is handing Eames a cup, from which he is instructed to take only a small sip; then Cobb and Mallorie are speaking, talking in low voices, and then he can hear Ariadne, saying,

"Now. It's ready now."

Saito is responsible for getting a house full of strangers to trust Cobb and his people: he promises that they mean no harm, and that they come only to show something that the people of the household might not otherwise have seen. His voice is low and entreating, and when Yusuf asks Eames to drink, Eames does not hesitate. He has forgotten the doubts that have plagued him all afternoon; he feels almost certain that something good will come of this.

Arthur is in the corner, and he watches Eames' lips as Eames draws the cup towards his mouth.

Then Eames is somewhere else, somewhere half-remembered. There are children; the colours and the people there remind him of a market. He can hear a woman laugh, and she sounds like his mother. A man walks past, and he looks like a man Eames once knew, a man who once taught him how to quickly slide something—anything—up his sleeve, quicker than anyone could see.

It takes him some time, to realise that he can hear people speaking French. He begins to look up, to try and figure out where he is, but then he is distracted by a smell, or perhaps it is a sound. Arthur walks past quickly, and Eames turns around to find he is still there, but now walking towards Eames from the other direction.

Eames does not realise his eyes are closed, until he opens them. Mallorie and Cobb are standing on either side of the Earl Marshal's chair, and Mallorie has her fingers on his wrist. Yusuf is drying his cup with a cloth, and putting it away in a small wooden chest.

"It was…" Eames looks around for the voice; it is the Earl Marshal, whose eyes are wide and wondering. "It was just like the day I met her."

Mallorie smiles at him, brushing a hand against his thinning hair. It does not seem odd to Eames, despite the inappropriateness of the gesture.

He blinks, and the room becomes sharper still. Mallorie is now talking to Ariadne; they are standing against a wall, nowhere near the Earl, and Cobb is speaking to Saito.

Arthur is still in the corner. His eyes are on Eames, and his smile is knowing.

 

"What was it like for you?"

It is Robert, asking the question that Eames has already heard a dozen times that night.

"Vague," he says, same as he has told everyone else. "I thought it was maybe a marketplace, somewhere in France. I think I heard my mother."

Robert nods slowly. His serious eyes are calculating.

"The Lady Ariadne explained it to me," he said. "The place was from the Earl Marshal's memory, but she—she worked the…"

He trails off. Eames can sympathise. The magic? The spell? The dream? There is no good word with which to finish that sentence.

"It was the place where he met his wife," Robert says, and Eames turns his attention back to him.

This, for the first time all evening, is something new.

"In Bordeaux," says Robert. "It was Arthur who found out, by asking one of the Earl's daughter's matrons. She used to be her wet nurse, and her mother's handmaiden before that."

Eames nods vaguely, and picks disinterestedly at his food.

"Mother has asked them to come back," says Robert. His hair is in his eyes as he looks down at his plate, but he is not eating anything, either. "Apparently they can make it so that the dream is mother's, or father's. It would be sharper for us, because we know them better than we do the Earl. Father wants to try it, and Cobb has said they'll come. They have a job nearer Peterborough in the coming week, but they'll return after."

"Aunt Catherine told you this?" asks Eames, confused.

"No," says Robert. His eyes are on a table across the room, where the dream-weavers are eating. "I asked the Lady Ariadne."

 

Eames rides Arthur home. For a moment he is afraid that Arthur will say he cannot go, but in the end, Arthur finishes whatever he is saying to Cobb, and agrees to meet with him the next day. Then he walks over to Eames, and says,

"I'm ready."

He's standing too close, and Eames is desperately glad that this one thing, at least, is the same.

Cobb watches them as they walk towards the stables. As Eames is saddling Algernon, Arthur asks,

"What was it like?"

_I don't know_, Eames wants to say frustratedly. _How many times can one be asked that in a single evening, for heavens' sake?_

But Arthur did not take a sip from Yusuf's cup, and his curiosity is different, starker and more honest. Hungrier.

Eames waits for Arthur to settle into the saddle behind him, and to curl an arm around Eames' hip, sliding a hand over his stomach. Eames takes the reins loosely in one hand, and threads his fingers through Arthur's with the other.

"It was like a marketplace," Eames begins, and Arthur laughs, clearly happy.

"That's what Matilda told me, when I asked about the Earl. That's how Ariadne said it would be."

Eames describes it to him: the smell of the damp earth, and the colours of the fruit in the stalls. The smell of sun-warmed mulberries. Arthur seems to think that that was of Eames' own making, and though Eames does not fully understand, he can see how that makes sense.

"Would you do it again?" asks Arthur, when they are standing outside his parents' doorway, and Algernon is grazing at their hedge.

Eames can see a candle flickering in the window. He shrugs, and says,

"I suppose I'll have to. When they come back in a week's time, once the Earl Marshal is gone."

"Yes," Arthur says, simply.

Then he steps a little closer, ducking his head. Eames reaches up and slips a finger into the neck of his tunic, just touching the soft skin, and Arthur smiles. In the dim light the curve of his lips is like a secret, half in shadow.

"Was it really like dreaming?" he asks, and Eames says, quietly,

"Yes. Just like."

 

The dream-weavers are invited to break fast with Eames' uncle and the rest of the household the next day. His uncle is already talking to Mallorie about their return, and Eames can see his aunt leaning over to offer her own opinion on the matter, obviously as often as she can. Eames' cousins are sitting on either side of his uncle on the long trestle table, and at one corner, the Lady Ariadne is talking to Robert, pointing to a space she has built by leaning one goblet against another and tapping against the goblets' bases with the fingers of her other hand.

Robert is nodding, and there is a slight flush on his cheeks.

"Sir Thomas," comes a voice at Eames' shoulder, and Eames turns to find Cobb sliding into the empty space on the bench beside him, hooking one leg over the wooden slat.

"Master Cobb," he says, guardedly, and Cobb gives him the kind of smile that makes Eames think that Cobb knows each of his reservations, and is simply waiting to see if Eames will say something of his own accord.

"I wondered if I might be able to speak to you, when we return," says Cobb. "I have a… proposition for you, you might say."

Almost without meaning to, Eames turns to look out the window, in the direction of the stables. Cobb laughs softly, placing a hand on Eames' forearm, and says,

"No. Not that."

Eames does not know what he wants to do.

He wants to push Cobb's hand away, and some part of him wishes that Cobb were not there at all. Another part of him, however, is more intrigued than he could ever say.

He can still hear the sound of his mother's laughter.

"Well," Eames says, swinging his legs over the bench and standing up, "I shall certainly be here, next week. And the week after that."

Cobb nods, and then holds a hand out for Eames to take. The gesture is oddly formal, and if Eames presses a little harder than he otherwise might—if he allows his eyes to say what he cannot—then that is between him and Cobb.

 

Later, Eames will watch Cobb packing up the last of the dream-weavers' things, helping his beautiful wife onto the back of the bright blue cart. Yusuf and Saito will be laughing again. When Cobb extends a hand towards Arthur, Arthur will also take it, and Eames will slide his eyes away, staring at the sun passing through the trees.

"Interesting people," his cousin Robert will say, his eyes trained on the bench of the multi-coloured cart, where the Lady Ariadne will be sitting.

_Yes_, Eames will think. Out loud, he will not reply.

 

Arthur taught himself to read. He learned basic sums in his father's market stall, and the first of his letters from men who came to them with their masters' orders. One of his father's older patrons took a shining to him when he was very young, and Arthur stole what bits of knowledge he could from the man and his two books. He hoarded what he learned, bit by bit, until he had enough to ask someone else for help, and then enough to offer the shire reeve's steward. From there he wormed his way into an apprenticeship that should never have been.

Eames wonders what Arthur might have done with his life, if he had been born noble. If his parents had been able to give him what books he pleased, and tutors to help him make sense of what he read. It is only now, after long months with Arthur, that Eames truly understands why Arthur had sounded the way he had, that first time: _I was apprenticed to the shire reeve's steward, and now I look after horses_.

Arthur loves his brother, and he loves Anne. When his brother was offered his own lands by Eames' uncle, Arthur opened the way for him to have a new life with the same meticulous care that he had opened his own path since childhood. He learned how to polish leather and how to tell when a horse had to be re-shod, and, with a few exceptions, he never let on how much this change had cost him.

But Eames sees it. He has always seen it, and he has tried to give Arthur what alternatives he can, by bringing him books and inks and wax tablets. For some weeks he has been thinking about asking his uncle to apprentice Arthur to his own steward: the man already has several boys and men working under him, but Eames is certain Arthur would quickly earn his place.

It is different now, however. Cobb and his people have come and gone, bringing with them Eames' mother's laughter and whatever Cobb told Arthur. And Eames is certain that Cobb must have offered something: more than once he has caught Arthur looking down the road with an odd look in his eye, or scuffing strange shapes into the stableyard earth with the tip of his boot.

"What's a forger?" asks Eames, when the two of them are crouched by Algernon's hooves, digging clumps of dirt out from them with a blunt hook.

"Exactly what it sounds like, I should imagine," says Arthur, smiling at him from under lowered lashes.

Arthur, Eames knows, never looks away from whatever he's working on if he can help it.

"Come, darling, don't be like that," says Eames, tempted to throw a clod of grass and earth in Arthur's direction, but concluding it would not be at all appreciated.

"Like what, Eames?" asks Arthur, still teasing, and Eames feels an unexpected pang in his chest and almost says, _Like someone I can't reach_.

Then he thinks better of it, and says, still not entirely carefully, "I want you to be happy."

"I know that," says Arthur, immediately sober. Then, more quietly, "Eames."

When Eames looks up at him again, Arthur says deliberately, as if he knows how hard it will be for Eames to believe it,

"I _am_."

 

Julian needs to ride to Peterborough for some undisclosed motive, and asks Eames to come with him. Eames has developed a marked predilection for not leaving his uncle's lands, but he can think of no real reason to decline. He tells Julian he will meet him at the southern gates and goes to collect Algernon, stopping at Robert's rooms on the way.

"I've brought you something," he says as he walks into the stables, and Arthur looks up, feigning disinterest.

"Oh?"

Eames motions Robert forward, and Arthur looks between him and Eames, obviously confused. Later, he will pretend he had not looked at Eames' hands first, as if to glimpse what it was that he had been brought.

"Sir Robert," Arthur says respectfully, and Robert, who isn't one for preamble, says,

"How many buckets of water fit in that trough?"

Arthur glances at the wooden trough behind him, and says, cautiously, as if still trying to make sense of what's happening,

"A dozen."

"Why?" asks Robert, and Arthur looks at Eames, raising an eyebrow.

Eames shrugs, and Arthur says, cocking his head as if he knows it's not the right answer,

"Because it's a dozen-bucket trough."

"And how much water fits in the bucket?" asks Robert.

Arthur shoots another quick look at Eames; he now looks angry. He hates not understanding what is happening, and he clearly feels Eames is to blame for this particular instance of it.

"A bucketful?" he says, sullenly, and Eames laughs.

Arthur narrows his eyes at him, in a way that promises nothing good for later.

"What if I were to drop four large stones in the trough? How much water would fit in it then?" Robert continues, seemingly oblivious to Arthur's exasperation.

"A dozen bucketfuls, not counting…" Arthur stops, looking consideringly at Robert. "Not counting the space taken up by the stones, which would otherwise be filled with water."

Robert nods.

"Yes. Good. Tell me, Arthur… Eames says you know some mathematics."

"Some," says Arthur, cautiously. "For sums and accounts, mostly. Not much."

"What about the mathematics of figures?" asks Robert.

"I helped my brother build his pens, and fence his fields," says Arthur.

His entire body radiates interest now: he's stopped looking at Eames, and his brow is furrowed as he looks at Robert.

"Very practical," says Robert. "And very useful. But what about mathematics that are not used for practical things? Mathematics as a challenge. Geometry."

Arthur shakes his head, very slowly. His gaze flicks to Eames, and there is something delighted in the lines by his eyes.

"No, Sir Robert," he says.

"Would you like to learn?" asks Robert, and Eames laughs. Arthur is so clearly eager that the question seems ridiculous.

"Are you offering to teach me?" asks Arthur, guarded as ever. "I can't—"

Robert is already walking towards the trough; he does not seem concerned with Arthur's uncertainty.

"Come here," he says simply, and Arthur looks at Eames one last time before following.

His eyes are warm, but there is also something else in them—something like an amused sort of disappointment, which Eames can't fully make sense of.

"I'm going to Peterborough with Julian," Eames calls out, already heading towards Algernon's stall as the two of them bend their heads over the trough.

Neither of them looks at him.

 

Eames is not entirely sure how the fight starts. One minute Julian is telling him there's only one last thing, can Eames just wait a minute, and the next thing Eames hears is the sound of a woman's raised voice, the slam of a wooden door, and then there's Julian, running pell-mell out of the public house and shouting,

"The horses, Eames, the horses!"

They've been to the cloth merchant and the smith's, where Julian picked up some new pieces of armour: Eames is wearing a mismatched backplate, rerebraces and besagues, because it seemed more practical to put them on than to carry them in a sack. He's also weighed down with a bag of bones for his uncle's hounds, and when Julian stumbles into view, it's not the easiest thing for Eames to jump into action.

"Run, Eames," pants Julian as he runs past, just as a man emerges from the pub behind him and swings a piece of wood—_Is that a chair leg?_, Eames has just enough time to think—at his head.

The man catches Julian's shoulder hard, and when Julian drops like a stone, Eames lets go of the bones and runs towards him, already thinking that Julian will owe him for this for a long time to come.

It's not entirely clear, amidst Julian's terrified laughter, the sound of a woman screaming, and the frequency of punches being landed on or near Eames, how many men end up coming out after them. Eames knocks at least one down on the ground, and then he somehow manages to get Julian on his feet, lob a besague at someone's head, and get them both stumbling towards the horses. The piece of wood—it _is_ a chair leg—connects hard with Eames' thigh as he swings up into the saddle, but, all things considered, he and Julian actually manage to emerge fairly unscathed.

"I left the hounds' bones," says Eames, churlishly, once they are far enough away that they feel confident slowing Algernon and Maximus to a slow trot.

Julian looks at him for a long, thoughtful moment—his left eye is going black, and there's a graze across his cheek that looks as if it could only have been made by fingernails; his hair appears to be _singed off_ near his ear—and then the two of them laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

 

"Eames!" Arthur calls, waving a hand as he catches sight of him.

Eames has Maximus by the bridle in one tired arm—Julian stumbled off into the house by the main entrance—and is fighting to keep himself upright on Algernon, but the sight of Arthur's excitement makes him smile.

"You'll never guess what Robert… What in the _world_ happened to you?"

Eames swings one leg over the saddle, and slides down Algernon's flank with a minimum of dignity.

"I wish I could say it was a long story," he begins, tiredly. "But it really isn't."

Arthur shakes his head as if profoundly disgusted, and takes Algernon's reins in one hand. They walk the horses towards the back of the stables and undo their saddles, and Arthur puts hay and water out.

"Better find them an apple or a carrot each, for services rendered," says Eames, leaning against the wall, and Arthur gives him a deeply unimpressed look before doing as he says.

"Why are you wearing three pieces of mismatched old armour?" he asks, suspiciously, and Eames glances down to find that somewhere along the line he managed to lose one of the rerebraces, too.

He steps away from the wall and looks over his shoulder to find that the backplate is badly dented, and that the strap that he used to secure it around one shoulder has almost come clean off the metal. The entire thing is muddy and does, in fact, look as if it's seen a month of battle, rather than a single brawl.

Eames shakes his head, reaching up to undo the straps on the remaining rerebrace. He winces when his left shoulder pulls painfully, and Arthur bats his hands away, undoing the leather bindings himself.

"Are you going to be all right?" he asks, sounding almost affronted, and Eames laughs.

"I've been punched before, Arthur. I'll be fine."

"Is there anything…" Arthur stops, as if considering his words carefully. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"What would help tremendously," says Eames, as Arthur ducks to pull at the leather on the lone besague, "Would be a distraction from the fact that I went to Peterborough for the day with my cousin and returned battered, muddy, missing half of what Julian bought, and without the bag of bones I went for."

"A distraction?" asks Arthur, ducking his head towards the place where the straps of the besague and the backplate have knotted under Eames' left arm.

"Yes," says Eames. "The kind of distraction where I pretend to arrive again, Arthur, and you come to me at the door, and you let me kiss you, and press you against the stable wall, and do with you as I will. Will you let me do that?"

"Yes," says Arthur.

"Well, perhaps then only a single kiss will do, just he—" Eames reaches out to touch the ticklish spot below Arthur's ear, and then— "Wait, _what_?"

"I said," Arthur says, finally pulling the besague free, and straightening to meet Eames' startled look with smiling eyes and a half-hidden smile, "Yes. You can do that."

Eames gapes rather stupidly, and then says,

"Are you… Do you mean it?"

His tongue feels clumsy in his mouth.

"No, Eames," says Arthur, laughing delightedly when Eames visibly deflates. "I don't mean it. I need you to court me for another four months, _at least_."

He sounds as if he thinks this would be a disincentive.

"Darling," says Eames, leaning closer, speaking right against Arthur's mouth, "You can be courted forever, if you like."

Arthur puts a hand on Eames' shoulder, and curls the fingers of the other in the hair at the nape of Eames' neck. He looks at Eames carefully, breathing softly against his lips.

Eames wishes he could say that he waits to be pulled forward, but the truth is that he doesn't know if he can, and that he doesn't necessarily want to, even if he could, and that, ultimately, he doesn't.

He presses his mouth to Arthur's, and doesn't wait at all.

 

Arthur's mouth is soft. His body is yielding in a way that he himself never is: even now, he has conditions and suggestions for Eames, commentary on what Eames should or should not do.

"Really, Eames, is this level of savagery necessary?" as Eames presses him against the back panel of Algernon's stall, holding him there with one hand cupped against the curve where his thigh meets his arse.

"No," says Eames, loosening his grip, mouthing tiny kisses along the line of Arthur's lips, his jaw.

Then he changes his mind—

"Yes; yes it is," and Arthur laughs under him, mocking and amused, letting his body drape into Eames in one long, happy line.

He smells familiar. Eames had not realised he knew what Arthur smelled like, but when he presses his nose to the edges of his collarbones, it is like a small, ridiculous homecoming.

"I want… I want you in my bed," says Eames, too busy pressing open-mouthed kisses to Arthur's skin to worry about being heard clearly.

Arthur shudders once against him, hard, and says, the way Eames suspects he always might,

"Maybe I'm busy,"

"Maybe," says Eames, pressing the heel of his hand against Arthur's breeches, and catching Arthur's uneven exhale with his own mouth, licking against Arthur's lips as Arthur lets his head drop back against the wall, "You're not."

Arthur is a study of contrasts against Eames' linens. There is the darkness of his hair, of his eyebrows, and the red of his panting mouth and the flush of his cheeks. His skin is golden against the bedclothes, and his angles sear themselves into Eames mind: the taut muscles of his neck, the sharp cut of his hips, and the curl of his toes, catching and releasing as Arthur breathes in small, heaving hitches.

Eames wishes his hands were bigger. Smaller, also, so that he could touch Arthur at every delicate juncture, so that he could trace daintier fingertips against his eyelids and against the spaces between Arthur's fingers, where his and Eames' hands are clasped together. But bigger, so that he could press his thumbs together against Arthur's belly as the edges of his fingers cupped Arthur's hips, so that he could press his palms against the back of Arthur's thighs and hold him, open and bent double against the bed, for long, interminable moments.

Arthur makes a small, clearly involuntary sound when Eames puts his mouth to him, lapping gently around the head of his cock. When Eames puts a hand against the small of his back and lifts him, licking into him, Arthur's body comes off the bed in one long, unbroken arch, his weight resting heavily against Eames' hands.

Eames can't decide where he wants his mouth. He wishes he had spent long months before now kissing Arthur under trees and nestled in the grass by riverbanks, because then he could have avoided this moment, looking down at Arthur's skin and feeling trapped between desperate choice and desperate choice.

"Eames," Arthur calls, gently, gently, until Eames feels the sharp sting of hands fisted in his hair and realises Arthur has probably been calling non-too-gently for some time.

"Mmh?" he says, nuzzling dazedly against the soft skin of Arthur's belly, and Arthur looks at him with steady, hot eyes and says,

"I want to touch _you_."

The tone is all Arthur, measured conviction tied up with some unnameable sense that one is being ordered about in the best of ways, and Eames slowly releases his grip on Arthur and allows himself to be pressed back into the bed, just as Arthur wants.

Arthur's mouth and fingers are everywhere, and Eames struggles to focus his eyes on the bedposts, or on the plaster of his ceiling: anything to distract himself from the steady _pleasepleasepleaseplease_ he can hear himself mumbling against Arthur's mouth.

Arthur lowers his body onto Eames with infinite precision, with a gentleness and patience that are belied only by the look in his eyes and the sharp press of his fingernails against Eames' shoulders.

Eames grips him by the hips, and tries his hardest to pretend he can't hear himself speaking—"I want you on your hands and knees, will you let me; I want to lick into you for hours, until you're shaking with it; I want your mouth on me and I want you to do what you like; please please, Arthur, can I, will you stay; please, your mouth, can I kiss you"—and he comes much, much, sooner than he would like.

His shoulder and his back hurt, and he can feel a bruise blooming on his face, but when Arthur comes in a messy rush against Eames' hand and stomach, all Eames can feel is a warm, pleasant flush down to his toes.

"Sorry about the savagery," he says, not really meaning it, and Arthur, slumped inelegantly over him, laughs.

"Next time," he says quietly, "When I am on my hands and knees, was it? Next time you can make it up to me."

Eames presses his hands more tightly against the small of Arthur's back, and breathes heavily into his ear.

"I think maybe next time," he says, and Arthur, quick as ever, finishes for him,

"Is now?"

 

"What's a forger?"

They're sprawled in a sticky, debauched mess on Eames' bed, in the sort of graceless disarray that Eames would not have thought Arthur capable of putting up with. Eames is not surprised when Arthur raises his head lazily to meet Eames' eyes, looking sleepy and unimpressed. He _is_ surprised, however, when Arthur says,

"I am disturbed by your single-mindedness, Eames," because to hear Arthur complaining about single-mindedness from anyone else is somewhat surreal.

"Arthur," he says, hoping that the pitch of his voice, entreating and earnest, will move Arthur to finally give him an answer.

Arthur shifts restlessly. He puts a cheek against Eames shoulder, settling, and taps his fingers against Eames' side.

"Cobb didn't explain in too much detail," he begins. "But as I understand it?"

"Yes."

"Mallorie said that people bring the skills and vices of their waking life with them into dreams," Arthur says. "So that a person with a talent for drawing, for example, might be able to make a dream realer, more believable, for the people they perform for. Because they can imagine towns and people and streets in dreams the same way they can bring them to life on paper, when they are awake."

Eames tries not to interrupt. He fails.

"And a person who can make sense of others, who has a knack for learning secrets when awake. They could burrow more deeply into a dream, into a person? Help make a dream more concrete?"

Arthur does not look up. He continues breathing steadily against Eames' chest, and says,

"That's what I understood from Cobb. Yes."

"And a forger?"

"Cobb said that it was possible to be in a dream… not as yourself."

Arthur sounds a little unsure; Eames doesn't blame him.

"Not as yourself?"

Arthur gives a disgruntled little sigh. Eames assumes he does not fully understand what he's being asked to explain, and resents the request.

"Some people, Cobb says, can… dream themselves into others. Can change. They can convince the people that they are performing for that they are seeing someone else. So the Earl, for example—they might have been able to show him his wife."

Eames is silent for some time, drawing a finger down the path of Arthur's spine.

"And I…?"

"Forgers can use looking-glasses," Arthur says, not answering the question. "Still water. And light, I think. To change."

Eames thinks of the bright flash of sunlight in his eyes, as he had turned away from Cobb and his family. He wonders what it is that Cobb will say to him, when he comes back. Whether he will say anything at all.

"I think," says Arthur, quietly, "That it has to do with… a person who can be more than one thing at once."

Eames makes an inquisitive noise in the back of his throat.

"Someone who can be, say, a gentleman and a thief."

Eames chuckles.

"Someone who can feel as if he has no family, but who binds himself to others as if they were brothers."

Eames tenses, a little, but if Arthur feels it, he does not let on.

"Someone who can think he does not always have much to offer," Eames feels every single one of his muscles tighten; Arthur, without looking up, runs a soothing hand against Eames' ribs. The gesture feels almost distracted, utterly unplanned. "But who has made generosity a life practice. Someone changeable."

They lie there, breathing, and for a long time neither of them says a thing. Finally, Eames ventures,

"Arthur."

Arthur looks up, turning uncertain eyes on Eames. Eames reaches down to weave their fingers together, and says, quietly,

"I am not changeable in all things."

"No," says Arthur. His smile is like every soft thing that Eames never thought Arthur would show on his face. "I know."

 

Cobb and the rest of them come in late afternoon, with candles burning dimly on the bench seats of both of their carts. Someone has replaced the bright blue cloth of the covered cart with a swathe of deep purple fabric, and in the twilight, the carts' approach already looks like something out of a dream.

"You'll put your boy to tending them again, won't you?" asks his aunt, clearly excited already, and Eames says,

"Yes, Aunt Catherine," not telling her that Arthur is probably already waiting for them behind the stables.

The nights have turned cooler, and Eames gathers some extra blankets from the house to take to the dream-weavers. When he arrives they have a merry little fire going, but Mallorie takes the blankets from Eames with thanks.

"I hope you don't mind that we have lit a fire behind your stables," she says in her soft voice, and Eames laughs and says,

"No, of course not."

He finds it hard to imagine that people could begrudge this woman anything.

He looks carefully around the fire as he leaves, but all he sees is Ariadne's warm smile, and the wave of her fingers from beneath the too-long sleeve of her dress. Arthur is not there.

The next morning Cobb and Mallorie and Ariadne join the household for its first meal. Robert waits to see where Ariadne will sit before taking his plate to the space next to her on the bench, and Eames sees his uncle furrow his eyebrows, and send William and Marguerite down the table, to sit across from Robert.

Robert shoots his father a single, exasperated look before turning back to whatever Ariadne is explaining, this time with the aid of three pieces of fruit.

Eames wanders aimlessly towards the dream-weavers' carts while the rest of his family is eating, not sure what it is he's expecting to see. When he arrives, Saito and Yusuf are sitting in silence. It's not until Eames steps closer that he realises Saito is asleep, and that Yusuf is keeping a careful, quiet watch over him.

"What is he…?" he asks, before he even says hello, and Yusuf turns to him and smiles.

"He is dreaming," he says, simply.

He gestures to the ground by his side, and Eames goes to sit beside him.

"It is not always easy to dream," says Yusuf, looking at Eames, then at Saito, "When you do what we do. But none of us have yet lost the ability to do it. Mal won't let us perform too often; she says she's heard that that's how it begins."

"There are others like you?" asks Eames, and Yusuf shrugs, giving Eames a small smile that is almost wistful.

"We assume so."

They sit quietly, watching Saito sleep.

"Arthur explained to you. About forgery," says Yusuf, suddenly, and Eames, startled, nods.

"How did you know?" he asks, "That I—?"

Yusuf smiles again.

"We don't, always. Sometimes you think you have found the right person for something, and then it turns out you haven't. Characteristics, virtues and defects alike, don't always translate, in dreams. Saito claims he has a knack for it, and Ariadne and Mal believe him."

"You and Cobb don't?"

"Well," Yusuf says. "We don't _not_ believe him."

Eames smiles.

"Will you come?" asks Yusuf, looking straight at Eames. "If Cobb asks?"

Eames shakes his head, regretful and more unsure than he'd like to be.

"My family is here," he says. "I have responsibilities. To my uncle, and my cousins. To these lands."

Yusuf nods.

"It is like nothing in this world, you know," he says.

Eames thinks of the sound of his mother's laughter for the hundredth time that week, and says,

"I can imagine."

"That's just it," says a voice, quietly. "You can't."

Eames jumps; when he cranes his neck, he sees that Saito has woken, and is lowering his own neck to one shoulder, then the other, working out the cricks.

"Perhaps," Eames says, wondering why it feels as if he's lying when he says, "But I still wouldn't come. I _couldn't_. This is my home."

"What about…?" Saito does not finish his sentence, but Eames knows exactly what he is talking about, of course.

"Ah, yes," says Eames. "I am afraid on that matter I can only ask you— He must be kept safe, do you understand?"

"Cobb looks after his people," says Saito, quietly.

Eames looks at Yusuf, wanting a second assurance. But Yusuf only looks at him, shrewdly, and says,

"Well. We'll see if it comes to that."

 

Eames' aunt and uncle want a Yule for their dream, half-memory and half-wish. They explain about the house where Benedict and Julian were born, and Arthur takes Cobb and Ariadne to see the large cottage across his uncle's own fields, which are worked by men employed in the manor itself. Mallorie spends time with Benedict's children, and looks meaningfully at Marguerite's round stomach as Eames' aunt speaks about the family's hopes for the future.

Eames can't find it in himself to fault his aunt and uncle's predictability, because it must be a fine thing to want people to build you a dream of something you already have.

When Cobb and Ariadne return with Arthur, Eames is waiting for them by the stables. Cobb and Ariadne ride their horses in and tether them under the beech trees, nodding as they go past. Eames only waits for Arthur to put water out for Algernon before he's leading him across the fields, to the edge of the pond. He pushes him down into the grass, and Arthur shivers in the cool evening wind before Eames lowers himself onto him, holding his face in his hands and pressing their mouths together.

"Eames, what—?" says Arthur, but then Eames is kissing the corner of his mouth, and biting gently at Arthur's bottom lip, and Arthur stops speaking.

Eames kisses him for a long time. The sky changes colour above them, and the water of the pond begins to lap more insistently against the banks as the wind picks up.

Arthur is warm and pliant beneath him. When Eames pulls back to look at him, his lips are kiss-swollen, but he stretches to follow Eames' mouth. Eames can feel Arthur hard against his hip, and he slides against him distractedly, too busy kissing him to think about much else.

"I have to get home," Arthur says, pressing closer.

One of his legs is wrapped distractingly around Eames', and Eames says,

"You can take Algernon. You'll come back early tomorrow?"

"Mmh," says Arthur.

Whether he is agreeing or disagreeing is unclear; by the time they have kissed for two or three more hot, drawn-out minutes, Eames has forgotten what he even asked.

 

To Cobb's credit, he takes Eames at his word, and says nothing of the difficult, unspoken thing between them.

"You spoke to Yusuf," he says simply, as Eames' family assembles in the hall.

Eames hums an assent, barely audible above his family's excited murmuring.

"If you change your mind," says Cobb, "We are moving north to Scotland, and should not be hard to find."

"Don't give me a reason to come find you," says Eames, looking straight at the wall opposite, and Cobb laughs—an honestly surprised, delighted laugh.

"I shouldn't think we will, Sir Thomas."

Then Yusuf is there. He holds up a cup, and says,

"Eames. Drink."

 

Eames' mother is there, dressed in a fine velvet dress.

The next morning, Arthur is gone.

 

Eames' uncle's men have been cutting firewood in the space just beyond the courtyards at the back of the house, and when Eames shows up and holds a hand out for an axe, Matthew hands one to him without asking any questions.

It's a crisp, clear day, but Eames does not feel the chill of the wind as it flutters against the thin, damp linen of his shirt.

"Eames."

It's Robert, standing at the road that leads from the house and holding his mare, Lily, by the reins.

Eames tilts his head upwards in what he hopes is an inquisitive way.

"Are you all right?" Robert asks, and Eames says, aiming for cheerful and unconcerned (and finding, to his own surprise, that some part of him _is_ happy, in a broken, generous way),

"Yes. Just chopping firewood, Robert."

"Fine day for it," says Robert, agreeably.

His wide blue eyes take in the pile of firewood by Eames' feet, and he laughs a little, shaking his head.

"I'm going to the village," he says, gesturing towards Lily with a flick of his chin, "But I'd like to speak to you, when I come back?"

"Come find me," Eames says, certain that when Robert returns he'll still be there, putting the edge of Matthew's axe to the old oak stump that they use for chopping.

An hour or so later something twinges painfully in his back, and he almost drops the axe, blade first, onto his foot. He shifts his grip to keep working, but as he lifts his arm, Matthew appears by his side, and holds his hand out for the axe.

"I think that should probably do for today, Sir Thomas," he says, and Eames gives him a sour look.

Matthew laughs, pointing to the haphazard stack of wood next to Eames, almost waist-high, and says,

"It might even do for this winter, Eames."

Eames' shirt is clinging to his back, and his hair is matted to his scalp, and suddenly, he's in no mood to be chopping firewood, or to be doing anything at all. He thinks of asking someone in the house to draw him a bath, but the wind on his face makes him think of the south fields, and of Algernon's steady, clipping gait against the hard-packed earth.

"Thank you," he says, raising a hand towards Matthew, and Matthew laughs again, saying,

"No need, I'm sure."

Eames heads towards the stables, kicking dust up with his boots like a child, and when someone says,

"Good heavens, Eames, how old are you, five?"

He says,

"Oh, sod _off_," before he registers the dry, familiar cadence of the voice.

He turns narrowed eyes on Arthur, wanting to say, _What are you doing here?_, politely interested, but then his mouth betrays him, and he says what he really means, an uncertain,

"Where have you been?"

Arthur gives him a strange, loaded look, and says,

"One of Dulcia's back hooves needed re-shoeing. Matthew was doing the firewood, so I took her into the village for him."

Something crumples a little in Eames' chest, and he feels, suddenly, petty.

Arthur's look speaks volumes. But then, because he never lies, he says,

"I thought about it."

Eames nods.

"And then I came in to your uncle's stables. Having thought about it. Do you understand, Eames? Having weighed it."

Eames nods again, a little miserable at the thought of all that has crept through his head since the morning.

Suddenly Arthur is there, brushing his nose against Eames' cheek.

"I know I made you wait," he says. "And it's not that I thought the waiting wouldn't have consequences. I know who you are. And how you are, Eames. But I need to know that you're going to learn, the way you taught me first."

"Learn what?" says Eames, already knowing the answer, and Arthur says,

"To trust me."

And Eames, admitting a meaningful uncertainty out loud for the first time in a long time, says,

"I can try."

 

Arthur tries to send him off with a kiss by the stable doors, but Eames will have none of it. He lets his knees give way against a bale of hay, and he pulls Arthur with him, half into his lap. Arthur tries to make as if he's eager to get away, but his knees settle more comfortably on either side of Eames' hips with each tug against Eames' grip, and Eames pulls at his tunic, leaning back against the stable wall and bringing Arthur towards him.

Arthur gives him a minute, maybe two, before he says,

"Someone will see."

Eames is fairly certain he successfully indicates his utter disinterest in this fact.

"I'm _working_, Eames."

"On _what_?" says Eames, but then Arthur says,

"Don't you have to speak to the Wilkinsons about their fence? Wouldn't it be best to be done with that sooner, rather than for it to drag into the evening, when I'll already be heading home…?"

As Eames walks away from the stables, through the shade of the beeches, he sees the tracks where Cobb's and Yusuf's carts drove out. He can see the remains of their fire, too, and the faded outlines of numbers and half-drawn structures traced against the soft earth.

When he looks behind him, he can see Arthur clearing Algernon's stall, working steadily and looking as if he belongs precisely where he is. Eames wants to tell himself that it's that simple—that Arthur's place is in Eames' uncle's household—but he knows that Arthur walked in from the village that morning not for his work, or for Eames' uncle, or even for James and Anne.

Arthur has made it so that Eames can choose to do with this knowledge what he will. He can do anything with it, he supposes: anything except make it fade.

 

It's still light when he returns to the manor from Harold Wilkinson's house, and he takes the back stairs to his rooms, rummaging in his chests until he finds two heavy, battered boots nestled under an old cloak. He's just about to turn one on its end when he hears a knock on the door. Robert walks in before Eames has a chance to put the boots away, and he smiles when he sees what Eames is holding.

"Enough to buy my father's lands now, is it?" he asks, jokingly, and Eames thinks briefly about denying it.

Then he says,

"How did you know?"

Robert smiles at him, the fond smile of a brother.

"Eames," he says. "Everyone knows."

Robert watches in silence as Eames separates the coin into piles. Eventually, he says,

"You're going, then?"

Eames nods.

"I once told him he would find something that he was born to do. Now he has. And as for me… Well, they say they might have something for me to do, too."

"Forging," says Robert.

Eames is not surprised.

"Yes," he agrees. "And if that doesn't work out, I can always sell mulberries in Peterborough."

Robert smiles at him.

"Cousin Thomas," he says, the way he used to when they were children, "You know they only want you to be happy."

Eames _does_ know. That is precisely why he suspects that the awful disloyalty of leaving his aunt and uncle and their kindness might never shake loose from his stomach.

"Can I show you something?" asks Robert, quietly, and Eames says,

"Yes. Of course."

Robert leads the way down the corridors, towards the rear courtyards where he'd seen Eames earlier that morning. The road leading from the house is empty, but two horses are tethered to the young oak on the left.

Lily is still beside a stallion tugging at the rope attached to his bridle.

"Volatilus," says Robert. "Or whatever you want to name him, I suppose."

Eames laughs.

"As grateful as I am for the gesture of the almost-unbroken horse, Robert…"

Robert's gaze is unexpectedly serious when Eames turns to look at him, and Eames stills at the sight of his cousin's solemn, clear eyes.

"Can you ride him?" Robert asks.

"If pressed," says Eames, cautiously, "Probably."

"Good," says Robert. He looks down the road, and says, quietly, "I thought we could go at dawn."

Eames swallows the first and second and third things he wants to say—what is there to say, that couldn't also be said of him?—and eventually settles on,

"I'm just the bastard nephew, Robert," because it's all he's got.

"And I'm the third son in a family that has only sons, if my brothers, and Benedict's three children, and probably the child Marguerite has coming, are any indication," he says. "They'll miss us, Eames, each as sorely as the other, but they do not _need_ us. Well," he says wryly, "Julian might, but it might do him good to take a punch intended for him, for once."

They both laugh, a little more nervously than the comment warrants.

"We can always come back to visit," Robert continues. "Ariadne says her father has consented to see her, in the last two years."

It's all rather more hopeful than either of them can afford, but Eames turns a thousand memories of his uncle's kind, paternal smiles over in his mind, and thinks they may not be entirely wrong to hope.

"All right," he says, shrugging and taking a deep, steadying breath. "We'll meet you at the stables at dawn. I hope you have a boot of your own, cousin."

"A small washing basin, actually," says Robert, and Eames laughs.

"You go collect that," he says. "And in the meantime, I suppose I'll try to break this horse."

 

When Eames finally returns to the house, dusty and with a vicious bruise on his upper arm, Arthur is waiting for him.

"I hear Robert went to the village and brought back a wild horse," he says, feigning nonchalance.

"Apparently," Eames says, pulling out a riding cloak and spreading it on the floor before beginning to pile clothing on it.

Arthur watches silently, and says, after what seems like a very long time,

"You know we don't have to go."

Eames looks at the warm, familiar darkness of his eyes. He thinks he understands that for some time now, Arthur has taken his gifts not because they were what he wanted, but because they were from Eames. That he will come with Eames now not because Eames is heading where he wants to go—which Eames just so happens to be—but because Eames is going, and because that is enough for him.

Eames takes two steps, and tucks his nose into the hollow of Arthur's neck, the way Arthur has done to him dozens of times. He brushes his mouth against Arthur's, quick and loving and uncomplicated. Then:

"Yes," he says. "I know."

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like to leave a comment on this story but prefer to do so on LiveJournal, the entry for this story can be found [here](http://syllic.livejournal.com/33319.html#cutid1).
> 
> Also, [some notes on mediaeval historicity, or lack thereof](http://syllic.livejournal.com/33694.html#cutid1).


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